On the cusp: Suisei no Gargantia, Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai 2, Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko., Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince, Kakumeiki Valvrave

Last week’s results about the Anime Power Rankings

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S – seeing Touma in the last 30 seconds was like getting bitch slapped by a 800 pound woman’s arm flab and that ruined a very good episode. Also, Kakumeiki Valvrave didn’t get a vote because Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate did a better job with improbable politics and Haruto’s freak out was actually yawn inducing to watch.

On the other hand, Yuyushiki was incredibly hilarious this week.

steelbound (The Null Set)

Chihayafuru 2 takes the top spot for another week as the season comes to a close. Aku no Hana finally gets its day in the sun behind a riveting and impressive episode. I think the show deserved more time in the top 5, because I don’t think it’s fundamentally changed at all — the show was just as good earlier on, and the early events were just as immersive and dramatic. Where was the love earlier this season? Kasuga has been suffering all season; is this the tipping point that finally convinces everyone that he has been screwed over hard enough?

Aku no Hana, unfortunately, doesn’t have a consistent hit/miss ratio. Sometimes its absolutely riveting, and other times it lulls me to sleep with its melodrama. This week’s episode was a little like episode 7 in that it got all of my Twitter pals talking, and with good reason. Both Saeki and Nakamura dump Kasuga AT THE SAME TIME? It must suck to have so many girls attracted to you. Poor Kasuga!

Nelson Rolon (Anime Guardians)

There also needs to be more love for Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai 2. This week’s episode was legitimately the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while. This show is a far better comedy than a “romantic comedy”.

We gather to discuss our thoughts on the latest Shinkai Makoto work: Kotonoha no Niwa. While it was fairly short for a movie, its stunning animation and sound execution is definitely worthy of praise. We also discuss our least favorite genres in anime and tons of currently airing shows like Oreimo, Oregairu, and HenNeko. Finally we wrap up with our surprise hits this season and our very brief thoughts on the upcoming Summer 2013 season.

Special Treat: For the last 20 minutes of the show, I bring in Zzeroparticle (Anime Instrumentality) to talk about the upcoming Anime Music Opening/Ending/Inserts Tournament! You can check it out here.

Download

Index
00:20 – Introductions
01:15 – Kotonoha no Niwa
12:45 – Our Least Favorite Genres
23:30 – Oreimo (Why are we still talking about this?)
28:00 – Yukino’s Thighs
37:00 – Spring 2013 Surprises
43:30 – Brief Thoughts on Summer 2013
47:30 – Interview with Zzeroparticle

Don’t forget to leave your questions and comments below!

If you wish to be a guest on future episodes, contact us at FridayAnimePodcast[at]gmail[dot]com

Truthfully, the common link that unites all of Shinkai’s works is the theme of impossible love ultimately succumbing to reality; Kotonoha no Niwa no different. I have no issues with Shinkai using this thematic structure over and over again, because there are so many interesting ways he has explored it. Love succumbed to the harsh reality of growing up in Five Centimeters per Second, the vastness of interstellar space in Hoshi no Koe, and …crazy Soviet science experiments in Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho. As you can see, Shinkai’s premises have certainly gotten less fantastic over the years, but no less unique. His films juxtapose narrative with a backdrop of stunning animation to create visual metaphors exploring the melancholy of impossible romance.

In Kotonoha no Niwa, the star-crossed lovers are cursed by society. Takao is a teenage boy motivated to become a shoe designer one day. He is unsure about his passion because he fears people would not take him seriously. Yukari is a girl in her late twenties unsure of where her life is going. Kotonoha no Niwa differs from Shinkai’s earlier films because the story depicts the first encounter – an anonymous meeting of chance in a garden gazebo during the rain.

Rain is the most striking motif Kotonoha no Niwa. The film utilizes full shots of rain falling to give certain scenes an ominous flavor, similar to a prominent scene from Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. In both films, the directors shift the visual focus to the falling rain to immerse the characters into the setting. The soldiers begrudgingly trudge along in their search for Private Ryan during the storm, and Takao and Yukari have no control over the rain, but long for another rainy day to meet.

Top: A rain scene from Saving Private Ryan that occurs during a scene depicting troop movement. Bottom: Similar scene from Kotonoha no Niwa, while Takao and Yukari are in the gazeebo. Notice the aesthetic similarity and methodical way the shots are inserted into narrative.

Metaphorically, the rain represents the pressures placed on the characters by society. Yukari is awash in stress from her job and has become disconnected with almost every aspect of her life. Takao is desperate to find validation in his dreams, and is alone in his struggles. Expectations pour onto them like the rain, and their only solace is each other – in a pavilion of a lush garden.

The rain is reminiscent of another type of precipitation from Five Centimeters per Second: snow. While the snow in Five Centimeter per Second kept Takaki and Akari apart, the rain in Kotonoha no Niwa brings Takao and Yukari together. Both the rain and snow represent helplessness. This helplessness unites Takao and Yukari throughout the film, finally giving way in the climax.

Rain falls furiously during the most dramatic scene in the movie.

In addition to the ubiquitous falling rain, there are many scenes throughout the film depicting lush vegetation, an important motif suggesting maturity. Remember that the disparity in age between Takao and Yukari is the element preventing Kotonoha no Niwa from continuing as a love story. Note the distinct lack of flowers in the film – the bond between the two characters is strengthening, yet love fails to bloom. Rather, love cannot bloom. The verdant flora is the subtle growth of feelings, trust, and finally closure for both characters, and the result of an entire rainy season.

Many nature scenes are reminiscent of Asian landscapes, where the subjects are subtly tucked within a vast depiction of nature.

This is the artful harmony that Shinkai illustrates – the relationship between man and nature, the link between heaven and earth. The rain drives Takao and Yukari together, lost in the downpour of their own lives yet able to find comfort in each other. They both grow as characters, ready to move on in the coming winter. The rain will return next year, for someone else, someplace else, forever nourishing the garden of words.

My first exposure to anything Cowboy Bebop came from my late night viewings on Adult Swim back in high school. I would watch an episode here and there because I initially became interested in the characters and the different scenarios they put themselves in. Plus I thought that Spike was a cool, suave mother fucker and that Faye was hot. But my interest in watching the show further diminished as other priorities in my life sank in.  It wasn’t until the summer of 2009 when I put some serious time into watching the series from start to finish. My first impressions were labeling Cowboy Bebop as one of the coolest anime shows I’d ever watched. But as time changes, so do tastes.

This post may get a little scatterbrained because of the format of this show. It tries, and I put heavy emphasis on the word “tries”, to tell the story of Spike Spiegel and the life he once lived, while at the same time being an episodic series displaying his life as a bounty hunter with Jet Black and how they acquire the assistance from Faye Valentine, Ein, and Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV to form the bounty hunting Scooby-Do gang. So this post will jump around me talking about Spike’s story and the misadventures of the bounty hunting quintet.

The whole story of Spike Spiegel and his history with Vicious, Julia, and the Red Dragons isn’t served justice in this show. You get an idea of what happened in his previous life, but you don’t truly get a grand enough picture of his former trials and tribulations. Because of this I don’t find the Spike Spiegel story as interesting as I once thought it to be. When first watching Cowboy Bebop all I could think was: “Wow, Spike had a pretty rough time before becoming a bounty hunter”. And to some extent I still feel that way. He falls in love, but then comes to realize he can’t be with Julia because Vicious is, well, vicious. But then Spike just fakes his own death and scoots his way out of the Red Dragon picture and becomes a bounty hunter with Jet.  Not much depth to go with when dealing with the main character of the series. And when it comes right down to it, every characters’ back story is mediocre at best.

Look at Faye’s story. It has so many holes in it, you could drive a semi through them. Her story goes from taking a school trip into outer space that leads to the space ship splitting in half, or breaking somehow, to which she is put into cryogenic sleep by someone or something, and wakes up 54 years later. With total amnesia, and “losing” the doctor she kind of fell in love with, she goes about gambling and bounty hunting to pay off this enormous amount of debt on her head. Later down the road when she joins up with Spike Spiegel and gang, she gets a Betamax tape, from someone, that shows her as a girl before her school trip disaster to which she recollects old memories of her former self. I found her story to be the most interesting out of all the characters, but it doesn’t help that there are these gaping holes in them.

And what about our energetic companion Ed? Well, Ed is an orphan turned superhacker with the energy of a 6 year old and the attention span of a goldfish. That is, when she isn’t hacking into every computer or super program cult leader demanded by either Jet or Spike, she’s bouncing around the ship and playing with Ein like she doesn’t have a care in the world. The only other information you have from Ed is that her dad is a map maker trying to recreate the map of the Earth, which in this time is pretty dumb since the Earth’s surface is reshaped by meteors that crash land every 20 minutes it seems, with an assistant whose name and character are irrelevant and the two of them run off at the site of every meteor crash they witness, kind of like the rainbow dad in Mushi-shi every time it starts to rain.

And Jet Black was a former cop. Then he decided to become a bounty hunter.

And Ein is a super intelligent Pembroke Welsh Corgi (thanks Wikipedia) that was apparently created by scientists.

The characters aren’t exactly defined by their back stories like in other anime. What makes them interesting to watch, and the strength of the show in general, are the episodic bounty hunts they go on and their interactions with each other.

Why couldn’t this show just have been the five of them bounty hunting? They still could have brought in the whole Julia/Vicious/Red Dragon story for Spike into the show. I literally had no problem with that. It’s the way they implemented it into the show that kills me. Let’s gather everyone up at the beginning, throw Vicious into the mix for an episode just to tie in the Spike story, go bounty hunting for the next 20 episodes, then wrap everything up with Spike’s sour relationship with the Red Dragons. This show isn’t the most well constructed in terms of storytelling. It pretty much falls flat in that aspect. What makes Cowboy Bebop such a joy to watch are the jobs the five of them take on, the interesting characters they encounter when trying to capture these bounties, and the fact that they are terrible at what they do because they can’t catch about 90% of the bounties they go after. And that’s about it. That’s all there is to this show. And it’s so weird to see so many people out there say that this is one of the greatest anime shows ever created. This is the most simple show in the world to grab the attention of so many fans. It’s kind of mind boggling. There are so many holes to this series, yet it’s still rather enjoyable to watch.

And when it comes right down to it, I’m on the fence about my true feelings about the show. I don’t want what I’ve written already to be misleading because there are things about this show that I truly do like. On one side you have these five characters that are so fun to watch. They bounce off of each other so well like a rubber ball to a brick wall that sometimes just watching them sit around Jet’s ship talking to one another is just as interesting as watching them fail at doing the one thing they do for the entire show. On the other hand you have lackluster storytelling for characters that already define themselves by what they do for more than half the series. I understand they want to shine more light on who they really are, but at the same time it really isn’t necessary. Cowboy Bebop tries so hard at perfection that it slips up on things outside of what made this show good.

I think Cowboy Bebop is the first show in my Journey of Favorites that isn’t as great the second time around. But that’s why I’m doing this. I’m doing this so I know for sure where I stand on these shows and where I will put them when I make my favorite anime list. It’s sad to see my opinion change for a show I used to like so much, but at the same time I’m glad that I was able to experience this show again. And it’s nice to know that there is another show out there that I find less appealing than what the general consensus thinks. I’ll just add Cowboy Bebop to my “I think these shows are kinda overrated” list along with Code Geass, Death Note, and Madoka.

On the cusp: Shingeki no Kyojin, To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S, Namiuchigiwa no Muromi-san, Kakumeiki Valvrave, Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru.

Last week’s results about the Anime Power Rankings

The duel between Shinobu and Chihaya unfolds like a wild west gun fight. Of course Chihayafuru 2 is my No. 1 show this week.

Shinmaru (The Cart Driver)

Chihayafuru 2 becomes the sixth show to hold the top position of Anime Power Rankings this season, which a dramatic and climactic episode that pits Chihaya against Shinobu. One of my major problems with Chihayafuru is how Chihaya always seems to pull something out of her ass and win, but this encounter not only delivered on its long buildup, but I felt like it was really unpredictable what would happen next. This is dramatic action at its finest.

Much to my surprise, comedy shows have been dominating the top of my list this season with Oregairu, Yuyushiki, and Hataraku Maou-sama! claiming the top three spots on my list. Anime comedy has always been hit-and-miss with me because of its dependence on both cultural references and word play (commonly lost in translation), but these three shows have managed to make me laugh out loud on a regular basis while still maintaining that quirky anime-only feel. If you were previously disillusioned by anime comedies as I was, I wholeheartedly recommend trying out at least one of these shows. You won’t be disappointed.

Windyturnip (Offshore Anime)

Yuyushiki was great. The pan-ningen joke made me laugh out loud. This show has quickly grown on me with its cute characters and solid execution. Everything you need from a situational comedy.

The more Aikawa and Mom-sensei, the better Yuyushiki is. This week had both in good amounts.

Nazarielle (The Shallow End)

Besides being the APR debut of Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince, this week also featured a really smooth results graph. Notice that this week was pretty “weird” in that many shows that usually top the rankings fell short (Valvrave, last week’s top show, fell to 9th). Despite the unique top 5, Sorrows Neptune hits APR bingo.

SNAFU hits home for me because I also went through a cynical phase in middle and early high school. I like to think that I grew out of it, but every now and again I’ll have knee-jerk reactions that remind me that that’s not quite the case. One such reaction was my harsh view of Sword Art Online and its fans before I had even watched an episode. Another was my initial hostility towards Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

In Jojo’s case, I overcame my bigotry, watched it all, and enjoyed it (unlike kevo). But that got me thinking — I am definitely not the only one that lets these cynical knee-jerk reactions rob me of experiencing and enjoying shows. I have seen lots of people go into various shows expecting to be disappointed every week. If you approach an episode of anime expecting it to be bad and looking for the negative aspects, of course you’re going to have a bad time with it. If you do this with pretty much every fucking anime that airs, you turn into Mr. Flawfinder.

Flawfinder, I’m calling your ass out. Not because you criticize anime; Roger Ebert criticized films and he’s generally regarded to be a fucking hero of the medium. No, the difference is that Ebert loved film and that drove him to watch as many movies as he could. From this experience, he learned what film could do, how people could use the medium to tell their stories, how cinematography could be used in amazing way. Pulling from this rich experience is what made him a good critic because he knew the strengths and weaknesses of the medium, as well as what was tried and true or on the cutting edge.

Flawfinder, based on many of your posts and tweets I can’t help but assume that you abhor anime. According to your profile on MyAnimeList, you have seen more than 700 different shows, so I’m assuming you know how anime can be cheesy, melodramatic, cliche, violent, moving, inspiring, hilarious, cute, sexy, etc. Thus you should be able to examine anime more completely and intellectually and less like a jaded, cynical misanthrope. No doubt you have anime that you love and consider the best in their genres, but does this make all the other shows that are “worse” in your eyes pointless? Enough of those shows sincerely try to do something sufficiently different that each of them will give you a novel experience, all you have to do is let them. Approaching anything expecting it to be shit only sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy because that is the only thing your rage goggles will allow yourself to see.

Experiencing any medium is inherently subjective. The creator has some thesis in mind about what they want to do and how they want to communicate it, but what the audience gleans from it can be entirely different because of unexpected interpretation or derived intrinsic value. Of all the lenses you could look at anime through, a cynical one is the narrowest and cloudiest of them all. If instead you take it easy, recognize that there will be some cliche, silly things, and take in the show with an open mind, you will catch more subtlety, have a better time, and have a more complete experience.

I don’t remember exactly when I started “taking it easy” but it coincides with my picking up of Aquarion EVOL. Pretty much up until then, I only really watched shows that were generally regarded to be high quality and serious business (e.g. Neon Genesis Evangelion, Code Geass, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, etc.). It’s a miracle that I even liked Lucky Star back when I watched it, because I was such an elitist. Then came Aquarion EVOL, so obviously stupid and campy, and yet I still shamelessly loved it for its audacity. Since then, I’ve been able to branch out quite a lot because I had the patience to enjoy shows I would have dismissed before. If I hadn’t learned to  take it easy and let myself like whatever I wanted, I never would have known the joy of watching THE iDOLM@STER or Hidamari Sketch, let alone Heartcatch Precure.

Anime is special in how it takes us to rich worlds and shows us how fantastic each can be. Many are for visceral experiences, still more are about examining what things would be like according to different rules, and let’s not forget the slices of life that celebrate la joie de vivre. Even if a show isn’t great, chances are it’s still worthwhile.

So, Flawfinder, if you can’t let yourself see the beauty or humor or power of the shows you’re watching, at least try to limit how harshly you berate them. People can and will be amused by those “bad” shows. People can and will read into “boring stories” or “annoying characters” and derive intrinsic value from them. People can and will have the patience to enjoy the shows you can’t. There is already so much negativity in the world, the last thing you or anyone else should be doing is trying to invalidate someone else’s positive experience.

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. 

Stephen Colbert

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

I watched Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood for the first time in late 2010 after it had finished airing. My former co-host at Anime Afterlife Podcast Vensito (though at the time I was not a co-host/blogwriter for that site yet)  had finished it a month or two before I had and would not stop raving at how it was one of the greatest shows he had ever watched. After listening to my overzealous co-host vomit words of pure elation for weeks on end, I gave in and picked up the show myself. And it is a decision that I’m glad I made. Because Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, in my eyes, became one of the greatest shows I have ever experienced.

The story of FMA is like a group of adventuring children. These children go along their merry way through the woods, doing whatever it is that children who actually venture outside their homes do these days, and they stumble upon a rather large pile of dead bodies. And being the simple minded individuals that they are, they decide to investigate these findings further. But instead of a group of kids like in Stand By Me, we have the Elric brothers. They start off their adventure by trying to bring their mother back to life using the one taboo in alchemy, human transmutation. In doing so Alphonse loses his body and Ed loses his leg; the process of equivalent exchange. In Ed’s desperation to bring back his brother, he bonds Alphonse’s soul to a suit of armor (why they had a random suit of armor in their house I do not know) and in the process loses his right arm. I won’t go too much into more minor details about Ed joining the military as a State Alchemist or his process of gaining automail. I’ll just mention that they become fixated about getting their bodies back by researching the Philosopher’s Stone to which they discover that PHILOSOPHER STONE IS PEOPLE!! They then agree to find an alternative solution which leads them to discovering the dark secrets of Amestris, the homonculi, the story of Van Hoenheimen, and the Dwarf in the Flask. All these discoveries persuade the Elric brothers to finding a way of stopping the Dwarf in the Flask, or “Father”, from creating a new transmutaion circle and opening the Door of Truth again. Of course if you are reading this then you don’t need me to tell you what happens in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood because you have more than likely already watched the series. Alright, moving on.

Only you can prevent Human Transmutation

Bear in mind that I have not watched the original Fullmetal Alchemist series. Whether that diminishes or strengthens my experience with Brotherhood and Fullmetal Alchemist as a whole, I’m not entirely sure. I do have plans to watch the original series not just because I love the FMA franchise from Brotherhood alone, but I also want to have an opinion on what others believe to be Brotherhood’s most fatal flaw: it’s pacing. I will admit that the beginning parts of Brotherhood do feel rushed. The massive jump from the end of episode one where Ed is in a hospital bed to the beginning of episode 2 with Ed and Alphonse on a train to investigate about the Philosopher’s Stone is just one example. I suppose the reason behind the pacing issue was Bones thought anyone who was going to watch Brotherhood had watched the original series beforehand and already knew the events that happened in the beginning of Fullmetal Alchemist. That way they could breeze through to the events that they recreated in the original series and present them as they were in the source material. Or all of that is false and Bones just pulled a Lucky Star. Either way, the beginning of the show is the only real complaints I have. The pacing throughout the rest of the show is actually incredibly well done. There were so many events occurring at once in the show, yet they never veered off for too long from any of the main events going. One of the best examples of this is during the final arc. At that time you had Ed, Mustang, Hawkeye, Scar, and the two chimera traveling to the underbelly of Central, Mustang’s gang held up in the Amestris radio station with Mrs. Bradley, everything that was going on at the front gate of Central, and the fight with Sloth, the Armstrongs, and the Curtis’. But it never felt that the show drifted too far off from any one of these events. It always gave each one enough screen time to where you knew exactly what was going on at all times.

The action sequences in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood are top notch. It was all well animated (unlike how The Sacred Star of Milos looked), energetic, and each fight felt as if it had weight to it. Each fight felt as if it served some purpose in the overarching story of the series whereas some fights in other shounen series are just there to act as filler. My favorite fight in the series has to be the Sloth/Armstrong/Curtis fight. I’m completely serious when I say that I cried during this fight. And not because anyone of importance died during the fight (although they do kill Sloth but Sloth was a low-tier homonculus in my book), but because of how over-the-top it got at the very end. There is a moment where Alex and Olivier Armstrong are against the ropes and out of no where Izumi Curtis creates a fist through the wall, sending Sloth flying, and she steps out from the fist entering the fight. Small introductions are exchanged before Sloth comes charging towards Izumi at full speed to which she tosses him across the room. On the other side of the room is her husband Sig Curtis and he punches Sloth, sending him flying to the other side of the room. The scene that follows is where I cried in tears of joy at not only how ridiculous the fight ended, but just at the sheer bromance that was created.

Comedy was one of the last aspects of Brotherhood that I thought I would get any enjoyment out of. To be honest I never really anticipated there to be any in the series. But when those comedy moments did show up, it was enjoyable. It’s main purpose was to break those moments of tension that were oh so prevalent in the series. I never really found myself laughing at these particular moments, but I did have a chuckle or two here and there because of silly moments between characters. Most of them being Ed getting picked on for his small stature, Ed and Alphonse getting in trouble for something stupid, or that moment where the Greed version of Ling Yao yells at Bradley and he gives off one of the best shocked faces ever.

Did anyone else notice that one of Bradley’s medals is that swirly thing you find in ramen?

Anime with well developed characters are far and few between. Or, that is to say, there aren’t enough well developed characters to where I notice that a particular character is not the same from when the series started. Off the top of my head, Okazaki Tomoya from Clannad and Okabe Rintarou from Steins;Gate come to mind. And along with those two is Edward Elric. Not only does the show develop him characteristically by having him go through many trials and tribulations, but they also develop him physically as well. That aspect alone is something I can’t say I’ve seen elsewhere. In the beginning of the series Ed is this short, scrawny character with about as much strength as a handful of wet noodles. It isn’t until Winry uses that cliche of noticing how big his back has become around the halfway point of the series. It’s then that I realized that we have seen Ed not only grow as a person, but also physically. If she had never pointed that out, I would have never noticed.

The most important aspect that I’ve taken away from the series is how everything that occurs serves some purpose in the story. Ed and Alphonse had a small scuffle early on in the story where Alphonse questions whether he really is who he is and if Ed didn’t just make up his whole existence. After that whole argument was resolved with a good ol’ brotherly fist fight, Alphonse brings up a memory he had of when they discussed who would marry Winry. Alphonse then tells Ed that Winry said she wouldn’t marry Ed because of how short he was. Ed has no recollection of such a memory. Fast forward some and we are at a point where they are questioning whether Alphonse’s body still exists somewhere. Ed relates back to that Winry discussion and comes to the conclusion that his body still does exist based on the fact that Alphonse still retains memories of when they were children and also retains memories he experienced himself. This is just a small example of how everything serves a purpose in the story of FMA. And that is one of the things I enjoyed most about this series.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood has ruined anime for me. As I stated previously, I watched Brotherhood way back in 2010. And close to 300 anime shows later, nothing has been able to top it. It is a truly incredible anime. A masterpiece if you will. When rewatching Brotherhood I marathoned and finished it within 2 1/2 days. Brotherhood is probably the most fun I’ve ever had watching an anime. I just hope that I can find another series out there to top Brotherhood. Not that I don’t want to have the show as my #1 anymore, I just want to find another anime out there that I find to be just as incredible as Brotherhood. Maybe Legend of the Galactic Heroes will once I decide to sit down and watch that series.

For those of you not versed in electromagnetism or the theory behind railguns, kevo does a good job of explaining the underlying physics and providing helpful diagrams in his post where he also calls bullshit on Misaka’s railgun, albeit for different reasons, but I’m going to reiterate in order to justify all those physics courses I took.

The eponymous rails run along the barrel of the gun and are connected to a power source. When a projectile that conducts electricity is placed in contact with opposing rails, a circuit is closed and the current through the circuit generates a magnetic field perpendicular to the plane formed by the closed circuit. Whenever a charged particle is moving through a magnetic field in some direction other than parallel to the direction of the magnetic field a Lorentz force is generated according to the following formula:

F = q (v x B)

In the above equation, q is the electric charge of the particle, v is its velocity and B is the magnetic field through which the particle is moving. The cross product between v and B results in the force F in the direction dictated by one of the 40,000 right hand rules, which Misaka demonstrates in the opening of Railgun S.

As seen in Physics textbooks around the world

In real railguns, the electrons that move across the projectile from one rail to the other have a Lorentz force acting on them as the move through the magnetic field of the circuit, which, in turn, acts on the projectile and shoots it out of the gun. Since the force that shoots  the projectile is proportional to the current flowing through the gun, jacking the current up can result in railguns shooting at speed that are absurdly fast.

Now on to Misaka’s railgun. Obviously, there are no rails involved in hers, but it still seemed to work in a similar enough way. Most of the time, she flips the token and waits until it is falling before she fires it. What I though she was doing was creating a loop of current in front of her to establish a horizontal magnetic field. Then, as the coin is falling, she charges it so that it feels a Lorentz force once it falls into the magnetic field, thus shooting it forward fast enough to ignite the atmosphere with the heat generated from friction as it rips through the air.

Sounds plausible right? I mean, level 5s are supposed to be super powerful and have insane control over their powers. Setting up the aforementioned conditions should be cake for Misaka.

Then came episode 6 of Railgun S, where she fires a token from rest.

“I bet you failed physics”

I wanted to believe, Railgun. I wanted to believe that you might know what you were talking about. Instead, it turns out you’re just using science based powers to do awesome things without actually doing any research. What a shock.

No doubt, I will continue to enjoy the show because Kuroko is the best, Misaka is hella bad-ass, and I am intrigued by Misaki, but now, just like Christmas after you learn that Santa isn’t real, every episode feels a little bit emptier.

On the cusp: Chihayafuru 2, Suisei no Gargantia, Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko., Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru., Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince

Last week’s results about the Anime Power Rankings

Valvrave continues to impress me with its greatness. Maou-sama was great and Ashiya’s story in particular was absolutely incredible. Finally, MJP continues to be an excellent mecha with lots of heart.

Reising (ToxicMuffin)

Now that we’ve passed the halfway mark, we can now see every shows’ true colors. The biggest surprise for me this season has been Kakumeiki Valvrave. After having a very rocky start, this show has impressed me with it’s ambitions. Sunrise clearly has a plan for this two-cour epic, and I will hopefully enjoy this ride from beginning to end. The blogger community seems to agree, as this show take the number-one spot for the first time this season.

I’m glad to see Railgun back to being legit as hell, giving us a bad-ass fight scene between Misaka and the adorable and hilarious Frenda. Chihayafuru is also back to being more than just recap between swings. The piratey violins in the background music may or may not have made the episode for me. And finally, Shingeki no Kyojin continues to be legit as hell, what with Eren ripping his way out of another titan and Mikasa threatening to demolish any number of soldiers to protect him.

Usny (Desu ex Machina)

In addition, To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S has reached the main conflict of the Sisters’ Arc. We finally encounter ITEM, and the action scenes did not disappoint this week. After a slow Kuruko-episode last week, I’m very glad to finally explore the other players in the Index/Railgun universe. Hopefully, J.C. Staff can sustain this momentum up through the climax.

(Shingeki) Levi was awesome, can we just have him as the main star instead. What’s this the faces and lines in this episode, it is borderline comedy. That’s good, since the plot is getting more and more BS.

FNZNA (FNZNA Side Dish)

Another fast-paced action show receiving a lot of attention is Shingeki no Kyoujin. This show is in high gear and refuses to slow down. In fact, I’m curious which show has more plot-twists left this season: Shingeki or Valvrave.

There are no bingo winners, but I have three questions for y’all.

1. Why aren’t you watching Oregairu?
2. What is the main appeal of Yuyushiki? It’s been consistently high on APR.
3. Are there any characters in the past year more stylish as Frenda? Maybe the girls in Joshiraku…

Anime Fans + Alcohol = Podcast Gold

Download

Seriously, nothing makes anime more fun than hanging out with other fans. I had an amazing time at Anime Boston, and I would like to thank everyone for making this a wonderful event. It was definitely an unforgettable experience, and I hope we can hang out again soon. You can learn more about my adventure here.

Fun Fact: After recording, we all watched Hataraku Maou-sama and Date-A-Live together.

Don’t forget to leave your questions and comments below!
If you wish to be a guest on future episodes, contact us at FridayAnimePodcast[at]gmail[dot]com